Mortise and tenon joints are often used along with adhesive to join two or more parts together. For example, in the airline industry, adhesively bonded mortise and tenon joints may be used to join structural panels in order to construct closets, galleys, lavatories, storage compartments and other interior monuments in passenger cabins. In the past, the panels were dry fitted together and then disassembled. An adhesive was then applied to the parts forming the joints, following which the panels were reassembled. This assembly approach was relatively labor intensive since it was sometimes necessary to dry fit the panels more than once before the adhesive could be applied. The assembly process was made more difficult in those applications where a relatively fast drying adhesive was used which limited the “working time” during which the panels could be aligned and fitted together. Furthermore, some assemblies may be too large to allow both applying the adhesive and assembling the panels within the working life of the adhesive, thus requiring inserts, brackets or other mechanical hardware to join the panels. The hardware added undesirable weight, part count and cost to the assembled panel structure, and increased the time and labor required for assembly.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method of assembling panels and similar parts using bonded joints which may reduce or eliminate the need for repetitive dry fitting of the panels. There is also a need for a method of assembling large panel assemblies using bonded joints that may reduce or eliminate the need for mechanical hardware to reinforce the joint.